Age of Vice

The events of the novel largely unfold in New Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. While both states are located in North India, the two regions are culturally and geographically distinct. Uttar Pradesh, known by its abbreviated form UP, is a large state bordering the Indian capital on its north and east. UP is not just a big state in terms of land; it is also India’s largest in terms of population. The state is important politically, as it sends the maximum number of elected politicians to Parliament. Therefore, political control of UP has traditionally been considered crucial for winning national elections.

In UP, there is tension between rising modernity and traditional feudal values. The per capita income of New Delhi, the Indian capital, is India’s highest, while that of UP is among the lowest of Indian states. Because of disparity in income levels, people from UP’s poorer districts often go to Delhi to seek jobs as domestic laborers and construction workers.

The presence of the Parliament and other political institutions, universities, the Supreme Court, media houses, and bureaucratic bodies means Delhi as a whole has a more cosmopolitan culture than UP, though some scholars argue the definition of “cosmopolitan” may be biased and Western-centric. Delhi also experiences many of the social tensions apparent in UP, such as gender hierarchies and caste and class clashes.

The geography of UP and Delhi has become more enmeshed with the real estate boom beginning in the 1990s. After the Indian economy was opened to foreign investment in 1991, Indian cities began growing very rapidly. By the mid-1990s, multinational companies were beginning to set up shop in cities like Delhi in the North and Bangalore in the South, leading to a rise in property prices. Delhi is surrounded by states like UP and Haryana. The expansion of Delhi has involved subsuming sections of these states under the larger Delhi area known as the National Capital Region (NCR). To support the new boom in Delhi’s economy, there has been a tremendous rise in supporting infrastructure, such as highways, tech parks, and residential condominiums.

In the novel, this infrastructure is shown to expand at the cost of agricultural and public land, often displacing traditional communities. Sometimes the communities are shown to sell their lands for attractive offers. In other cases, such as those of the landless communities living in the Yamuna Pushta area, they are resettled in far-off regions. Both kinds of dispossession lead to problems of underemployment and dissatisfaction, which further fuels social tensions.